Proactive inspirers
Centre or outskirts? In this case it is a matter of interpretation. Martin Mahn is based in the city centre, on Ziegelstraße in Berlin-Mitte, and drives out at least once a week to the outskirts – to a new centre, the Adlershof Technology Park. Mahn, Managing Director of Humboldt Innovation, is convinced: “If Humboldt University with its key institutes had not moved here to Adlershof there would have been fewer spinoffs.”
He explains: Setups are easy in Adlershof. If a location is to support the setup of new companies it is important that it can provide suitable space and areas in all phases of these companies’ development. In Berlin City Centre the available space around Humboldt University is restricted and the rents are two to three times as high.
Yet in Adlershof you are in the middle of things in another sense as well: “There are a lot of people here in a similar situation,” explained Michael Linscheid, research vice president and professor of chemistry at Humboldt University. “Founders can feel themselves in good hands here.” After all they are sitting in the middle of a technology park with a natural mix of research institutes, university institutions and various sizes of companies, including successful university spinoffs like the micropump maker Acuros GmbH or the IT specialists for “Barcoo”, which augments mobile phones with a barcode scanner.
Also Martin Mahn emphasises the importance of models if you want to start your own spinoff from the university you’re working for. This specialist for founder support conducts about fifty initial talks a year, five to ten of which are followed by spinoffs. Whether IT specialists at “Availability Plus” developing high security software or chemists at “Creative Quantum” wanting to launch innovative analytical methods, Mahn and his team try with quite practical means to accompany the future founders on the road to their company. For this purpose they are planning to set up their own “Founders’ Villa” in Adlershof next year. “With this we intend to provide initial support, specifically for the preparatory or so called preseed phase: office space, computers, a reference library, congress rooms,” explained Mahn. Michael Linscheid describes the project as an “incubator”.
As a professor of chemistry he also provides direct assistance to students who are thinking about their own spinoff. “A long time can elapse between a discovery or development at the university and a marketable product,” he explained. And this phase is especially critical. According to Linscheid the university considers how future founders can be supported even further, for instance by allowing them greater access in this phase to the laboratories and facilities of the local university institutions. “With the aid of collaboration agreements future founders can utilise technical facilities and key equipment for a time – before they venture their own investments in expensive technology,” answered Linscheid when asked to describe the procedure. In this respect too Adlershof with its university institutions is the central address for founders – until they are perhaps led to their own company next door.